


Finally, The Fallout

by Kivan



Series: From the Fires [17]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman Beyond, Teen Titans (Comics), Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: 90's Rom-Com Hate, Break-up's, CADMUS - Freeform, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Multi, Relationship Freeform, cloning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-26 00:33:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4982992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kivan/pseuds/Kivan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I know you think you want to hear it,” Tim sighs, “So I’ll keep talking.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finally, The Fallout

**Author's Note:**

> Terry's backstory is a Batman Slap in the face. Don't ever let anyone tell you different.

Tim sighs, “It had nothing to do with you.”

Kon can feel his shoulders tense, and chews a bit more viciously on the inside of his lip to keep from saying something nasty. It hurts. Like a plunge in the gut or a sucker punch to the sternum.

“All I can think to say right now are lines that _have to be_ in terrible ninety’s romantic comedies,” Tim scoffs like he knows it’s not funny, and he’s being more honest than Kon can remember since the wall came down.

“Do you love him,” Kon asks, already knowing the answer, but knowing he needs to hear it.

“ _God_ , Kon,” Tim hisses, “That’s totally a line from a ninety’s film. Why ask it? _Why_?”

“Because I need to hear it,” he argues.

“Because you want to rip _whatever hope_ we have of salvaging a decent friendship from this to _shreds_?”

“Well then _why didn’t you just tell me_ ,” Kon roars back, “Can you come up with any _decent_ answer to that?”

“Because _you’re my best friend, Kon_ ,” Tim roars back just as loud and Kon forces himself to meet the other man’s eyes, for the first time since Tim had walked out onto the roof. But whatever Tim sees in his eyes doesn’t stop him, if anything, he yells louder. “Because I knew it would hurt you. Because I’ve known that since the beginning. Because, _yes, I fucking love him_.”

And there it is. The wind around them seems to still even, just for that astounding declaration.

“I didn’t mean to,” Tim says, voice so soft the wind tries to run away with it, but Kon hears him anyway, even when he turns around to face the water, “Hell, I didn’t want to. And it terrifies me. Because no matter how much I loved you, I won’t say it’s the same.”

Tim stops, and Kon can hear his feet shuffle along the gravel roof, and then as he sighs probably sitting down on one of the air conditioner units.

“I know you think you want to hear it,” he sighs, “So I’ll keep talking.”

Kon doesn’t stop him, hoping that if Tim just puts it all out there- throws all the daggers at the board now, nothing will be left for later. He can heal from this, and then, someday, they’ll be friends again.

He’s thinking long-term apparently. Honestly he can’t imagine losing Tim at all.

“I loved you, Kon. As in, _I jumped off of buildings because I knew you would catch me_. I had- _have_ more faith in you than I do in the _sun rising in the morning_ sometimes,” he sighs so heavily that his breathe shakes and Kon can feel it, “And I’m not saying its any better or any worse, but I love him.

“I love that I don’t have to talk for him to know exactly what I mean or when to step in. He cooks breakfast when I don’t want to get up in the morning, and reminds me of trivial things when I don’t want to have to think. _It’s not the same_ , but every bad part of me that _I hate_ and you used to _make me proud of_ , he works around like _it’s not a flaw_ and just accepts it as _me_. And there’s more bad now than there was before the fence.

“And he’s an asshole, trust me- I won’t lie about that. But when he doesn’t pull his punches there are reasons. He knows the line, and _yes, sometimes he ignores it_. But there’s never not a reason, I just never knew those reasons. He treats Dana like a princess and he take Mar’i for dancing lessons, because he’s convinced her that they’re _pre-training for sword fighting_. He’s the one who’s making Terry a part of the family, and trying to fix what he’s lost- which is a _shit ton_ , just so you know.

“When those fences came down, we may have all been alive, but none of us were _whole_. Before- _before the lock down, Kon_ \- Dick and Kory barely spoke, Mar’i cried all the time. Bruce couldn’t use words to save his life. Babs and Jim couldn’t look at each other. Jason wasn’t even there. Cass didn’t understand how to communicate without violent force. And Damian,” he laughs, his head shaking sharply. “We were on the verge of breaking up for over a month and I didn’t know how to do it, Kon. It felt like we were all waiting for something.”

Tim pauses, and Kon forces himself to turn around. Tim’s head in lowered, his eyes on his hands between his knees, rolling a piece of gravel between his fingers. He traces along the jagged edges, the tips of his nails going white with the pressures.

When he speaks again, his voice is reverent.

“Kory denies it to Dick, but she let Mar’i watch the news nonstop when anything about Gotham was on- Roy ratted her out weeks ago. Jason lets her lie because he knows Kory just wants her daughter to know her father. When Stephanie literally bashed her way into our lives, she demanded so many answers that we all had to learn to yell louder. Cass cares about her so much now, that losing her would be like losing a limb. Bruce never wanted daughters and now he’s suddenly got three. Babs is captain of the GCPD now, pretty sure you knew that- Gordon’s run that place now. She’s engaged, too- which is newer news.

“And then there’s Terry,” Tim huffs and looks up at him suddenly. “I doubt Clark told you about Terry, did he?”

Kon lets the confusion on his face answer that question.

“There was a hostage situation, in one of the downtown hotels, about six months after the fence went up,” Tim tells him slowly. “A gang of break-outs,” he huffs, “Doesn’t even matter who, shut down the elevators and set up grenade traps in the stairwells- locked around sixty people in the top five stories, and the only was in was through the building next door, and we have to rig a zip-line. But they had gunners on the streets and we couldn’t get to the building. So we have to go in through an old service hatch. Lots of mishaps and about twenty minutes later, we get in the building- only to find, it’s not a normal, run of the mill office building like the city planning says it should be. There’s equipment and computers suited for a high scale research lab. This is six months in, though, so naturally everything’s abandoned- had been since the twenty-four hour evacuation.

“We deal with the hostage situation, and a few hours later, Damian and I go back. And I don’t know what I’d been expecting- usually I’m ready for the worst case scenario. But when we started pulling up CADMUS files, it kind of shocked me, I guess.”

When Kon looks at him this time, Tim is smirking in a way that Kon isn’t used to. It’s looks smug and self-deprecating all at once. He realizes after a long moment that its Damian’s smirk plastered on Tim’s face as his fingers continue to coax over the sharp edges of the rock in his hands.

“It stung,” Tim admits, “More than anything, when we found out that _not only_ had they been running experiments in our town, under our noses, but that they’d finished them. That they’d made something- _someone_ , and we hadn’t even known. Terry is a complete biological duplicate of Bruce. When the program deemed him mentally deficit they made up a profile and adopted him out. They literally made Bruce a brother, a genetic-doppelganger and then _gave up on him_ , because his brain scans wouldn’t match up as an infant.” Tim laughs, mirthless.

Kon gapes, his insides freezing.

“When Clark got all the ends picked up for us, we were able to locate him. At that point, we let him be. He had his mother and his younger brother, and we had no reason to interject a grenade into his life. But, as you can probably infer, that didn’t last. In month ten someone shot Max when he was walking home from school. And then Mary McGinnis died in a bombing a few weeks later. He didn’t take it well, as if anyone would. Then Damian introduced himself, it was with his usual brashness and Terry,” Tim laughs, “Gave him a solid right cross in the middle of a downtown sidewalk. He thought it was a joke.”

He takes a deep breath and when Kon looks at him again there’s a gleeful twinkle in his eye.

“There were _so many things_ that went wrong inside that fence,” Tim sighs out like it’s a weight coming off his shoulders, “ _So much_ that shouldn’t have happened and that no one can fix. But _Terry_. There’s nothing _but good_ in that kid, and if that fence hadn’t gone up, we never would have found him. And maybe without it, Mary and Warren and Max would still be alive- but I wouldn’t give him up for anything. Or Dana.

“And watching Damian train him, knowing that they’re growing together- that helps make it okay. And Stephanie, with Cass, whenever she smiles- it’s a little easier. When Babs and Sam get married next year it’ll be a bit more. Every time Damian makes breakfast, or Dana laughs. When Mar’i asks me to dance or Jason and Dick get into a fight- everything is a step forward and _I can’t look back, Kon_. I’m not sorry for that. I can’t pretend it didn’t happen.”

Kon watches him smiles and honestly, he gets it. Because even if the Bats being locked in that city broke a lot more than what was inside, Kon won’t be the one to tell Tim that.

“Before all that I jumped off buildings because I knew you would catch me,” Tim tells him, smiling with every word, “But I jump off them now because _he’s right behind me_.”

**Author's Note:**

> I might choose to expand this. I just don't know yet. I originally wrote it because of Damian and Tim and Kon- but there are other things happening in my brains now.


End file.
